"The most common characteristic of all police states is intimidation by surveillance. Citizens know they are being watched and overheard. Their mail is being examined. Their homes can be invaded." ~ Vance Packard

How Dare You Rob Me of My Time on Earth

Most people think of life as precious, a miracle, a fabulous gift. Life is all of these and more. Above all, life is sacred. Sacred, because each human life is God-given, unique, one-of-a-kind, never duplicated. And once that life is over, THAT life—yours and mine—is gone forever, lost in the incomprehensible dimension of eternity.

The other evening, a lady friend and I got into a discussion about enjoying life. She asked, “Where were you in 1850?” “That’s an odd question,” I answered. “And where will you be in 2050?” she asked. “Non-existent in both cases I suppose; so what’s your point?”

She smiled. “My point is this, if we weren’t here a hundred years ago, and won’t be here a hundred years from now, the few years that we ARE here—that conscious, alive, awareness around us, living, feeling, breathing, loving, are the most precious moments we will ever have because after that there will be nothing…total oblivion…forever.”

“So, we should not waste a minute of living, right?”

“Exactly. But that’s not all. It is an unforgivable crime to steal those precious moments from anyone; and I mean any breathing body and living soul.”

Later that evening I gave considerable thought to this lady’s unique but perfectly sound philosophy. It went far beyond Schweitzer’s “Reverence for Life”, or Bernard’s “If I had to define life in a word, Life is Creation”, or even Swift’s “May you live all the days of your life.” In short, the lady expressed condemnation for stealing another human being’s time on earth as the most despicable evil act she could imagine.

Now, her idea of the afterlife may be different than yours or mine but getting there, and who helps us get there is beyond dispute.

Ponder this. Think about the many ways an individual’s time of life is stolen by another individual; by random, acts of wanton carelessness, or cruelty. And these atrocities in all their hideous forms have no preference for time, place, season, or country. When it comes to robbing someone of his time on earth, all options are on the table. Including war.

Yes, WAR, the curse of the devilish part of humanity that is responsible for this senseless butchery. WAR is the method, territorial acquisition (or empire building) is the motive, regime change is often the excuse, profit is the payoff, and young soldiers are the expendable means…they are, and and always have been.

The Revolutionary War (which created America) and the Civil War (which saved America) were close to being somewhat “justified.” Nevertheless, war, of any kind, is the damnable culprit and needs to be outlawed and driven off the planet. History, including ours,
demands it.

In seven of our nation’s “major” wars, time on earth has been stolen from more than a million and a half young soldiers; their minds shut down, their eyes closed, never to see again, never to laugh, to love, to raise a family; only the nothingness of death for all eternity. All we can do is bury them with customary honors and feel proud when we say, he died for his country, when in fact his country never gave him a chance to LIVE for it.

And the robbery of a soldier’s time on earth gets even more criminal in today’s inexcusably senseless Middle East wars. During these days we feel in our gut that when General Sherman said, “War is hell” he was only half right. When a soldier’s life is stolen from him for any reason but defending his homeland, it is a capital crime against all humanity. And it must stop!

Can you hear it? Can you hear the voice from the grave of some young soldier who had irreplaceable moments of life stolen from him by a rogue government senselessly perpetuating preemptive wars, and demanding more and more soldiers to fight them, and die if need be. Do you hear him?

Comments

Far from "saving America," the War of Northern Aggression utterly destroyed whatever vague semblance of a voluntary association then existed among the States. The Southern cause was "close to being somewhat justified."

Re: The Revolutionary War (which created America) and the Civil War (which saved America) were close to being somewhat “justified.”

The so -called Civil war--the South was not trying to invade the North. It was not a civil war. It hardly saved America. We are all slaves now.

Abraham Lincoln destroyed the Philosophical Union and imposed a Physical Union--Force over Reason--using bayonets and a train of usurpations worse than England's George III--the reason for seceding from England in the first place--and Lincoln UNDID Jefferson's works and thereby added teeth (an understatement) to Hamilton's Proto-Fascist national banking super state agenda.

They were both Revolutionary Wars. Re: the first War: The British are coming! Re: The second War: the British and their ways are already here with their Mercantilist agendas enforced by Abraham Lincoln's War of Northern Aggression.

Freedom--from tyranny and its train of usurpations--is necessary and essential but not sufficient. See Thomas DiLorenzo's "How Capitalism Saved America" (now remnant thanks to the planks of Abraham Lincoln's Unnecessary War. It was also the bloodiest war in American History and waged on civilians and later on the Indians).

The Southern cause was "NOT [just] close to being somewhat justified." It was right and completely justified.

Lincoln's stated purpose in the war was to destroy the principle of the Declaration of Independence that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Southerners no longer consented to being governed by Washington, DC, so Lincoln waged total war against them for four long years. Of course, he didn't put it this way but instead sugarcoated his objective with language about "saving the Union." At the time many Americans — including dozens of Northern newspaper editors — considered the act of compelling a state to remain in the Union at gunpoint to be destructive of the voluntary union of the states. And they were right.

Understanding the large body of knowledge that intellectuals Ayn Rand and Ludwig Von Mises and their students-- including the ground breaking work of Thomas Dilorenzo's, "The Real Lincoln", and Stephan Kinsella's illuminating work on CopyRight copywrongs and its co-destruction of a Division of Labor society--are essential to UN-Blinding what IS UnSeen and impossible to glean by just reading what one's masters write, teach and spread around.

Lysander Spooner, the author of the 1845 book, The Unconstitutionality of Slavery and a celebrated abolitionist, wrote in his 1870 essay, "No Treason," that "all these cries of having ‘abolished slavery,' of having ‘preserved the union,' of establishing a ‘government by consent,' and of ‘maintaining the national honor' are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats — so transparent that they ought to deceive no one." Thanks to 140 years of propaganda in the government schools, these "cheats" now appear to deceive nearly everyone.

Re: "During these days we feel in our gut that when General Sherman said, “War is hell” he was only half right.

Yes, War is hell for those who wish to secede from exploitative empires.

As soon as Gandhi began influencing millions of Indians, he and some 60,000 of his followers were imprisoned in 1930. This led Winston Churchill to declare that "Gandhi-ism and all it stands for [peaceful resistance to tyranny] will, sooner or later, have to be . . . crushed." "Gandhi had replaced Lenin as Churchill's arch nemesis," writes Baker.

Sherman was every bit as much a racist and white supremacist as Lincoln. He was also an anti-Semite, and of course hated red-skinned people almost as much as he hated South Carolinians — and would later kill them in even greater numbers.

Slaves were raped, pillaged, and murdered indiscriminately along with the white population of the South, and Sherman did nothing to stop it. *This is documented*.

It has been claimed in print that Sherman was some kind of egalitarian who was motivated by indignation over the degree of racial inequality in the South. (Cisco proves what delusional liars such Lincoln (and Sherman) cultists as Victor Davis Hanson are in "Abuse of African-Americans" by Sherman's army in Cisco's final, stomach-turning chapter.

...The union of the founders was destroyed in 1865. War Crimes Against Southern Civilians explains in great detail how, in addition to killing some 300,000 dissenters to rule by Washington, D.C. on the battlefield, the U.S. Army, under the micromanagement of Abe Lincoln, also murdered tens of thousands of Southern civilians, including thousands of slaves and free blacks, while stealing tens of millions of dollars of their private possessions as well. None of it was necessary, of course, for the purpose of ending slavery; all other countries on earth ended slavery peacefully during the nineteenth century. This included the British, Spanish, French, Dutch, and Danish colonies, where 96 percent of all the slaves in the Western Hemisphere once existed. The purpose of the war was to finally realize the Hamiltonian dream of a consolidated, monopolistic government that would pursue what Hamilton himself called "national greatness" and "imperial glory." The purpose of the war, in other words, was a New Birth of Empire, one that would hopefully rival the Europeans in the exploitation of their own citizens in the name of the glory of the state.

Hi, Suverans2. Thank you. I enjoyed the saying of it too. Thanks go to Thomas DiLorenzo for doing the heavy lifting and his and my teachers (Rand and Mises). When someone understands what one is saying and appreciates it--because they have gotten there too--it is a truly and indeed wonderful. Thumbs up to you, Suverans2.

PS I started turning down my belts in Aikido for the last ten years but I will accept your kind support and this ten for the post.

These following two links relate to this issue of the forethought and need to walk, crawl and retreat--or have a back door--hopefully before coming under fire and move outside the grappling hooks of an oncoming onslaught (power arc).

We now have this kind of stuff going on--calling individuals and groups cowards for repositioning into the eye of a storm--most especially regarding the French in WWII i.e. supposedly for not fighting and retreating. But it is proper to get away when facing superior technology. In fact the British expedition fleed back across the channel during the lightening like communications and coordination of the till then UNheard of and UNexperienced Blitzereig onslaught, yet no one calls them out on that. Hell, the French high command did not even have a phone in their command post.

Then of course the Brits said the same thing about the early proto-Americans who turned and RAN into the forest to lean on trees for hmm agh support...

The following explores this and other apparently unknown issues...including how an American fortress in Manila was taken out from behind and how a British fort in Singapore similarly as it relates to French fortifications...

Unfortunately what was visited on the South and Ghandi and the rest of the world is also very much here on these shores and heaped upon those who are minding their own business and defending their own. War is being made on civilians--we are all slaves now--as we speak.

On May 13, 1985, in the twilight of the Cold War, residents of Philadelphia were ruthlessly bombed from the sky...

The perpetrator was not the Soviet Union, or else the attack might have escalated into international conflict. It certainly would have made it into textbook timelines and become part of the nation’s consciousness. No, those responsible for this atrocity were members of the Philadelphia police department. The local cops sought to finish off their political enemies after years of animosity and tension. The proximate legal excuse for bombing their own city? The cops had gotten complaints about noise and the stench of compost.

Twenty-six years have passed since the bombing of the MOVE house and if there was any doubt before, it is now beyond question that the local police have become the occupying troops that Malcolm X described. They are the standing army the Founding Fathers warned against. In the United States, they are the most dangerous gang operating and they do so under the color of law.....

The chaotic violence of the modern police state is ubiquitous. Every day there are 100 SWAT raids in America. Remember in the old days when SWAT raids were reserved for stopping some terrorist intent on destroying half the city? Maybe that was just in the movies. There were 3,000 SWAT raids in 1981, the year the author was born, which was bad enough. There will be 40,000 this year.

Surely, the people who are killed by the cops had it coming. Well, consider how many are killed when the police presumably do not intend to kill at all and so reach for their taser...

Although there was plenty to object to in colonial law and law in the early republic 1776, police as we now know them didn’t exist back then. (Actually the so called Law and Order Red Coats were the thin red line cops back in the time as were the blue line of Lincoln's troops (see above posts regarding their law and order usurpations on civilians).

But don’t police put their lives on the line for us? Only 117 police were killed in the line of duty in 2009, which might seem like a lot, but being a police officer is not even one of the top ten dangerous jobs in America. Policeman is 12th and fireman 13th.http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/86367.html

Regarding statistics of life forms being shot by police in their war against everybody:

The TV news frets about al-Qaeda, but rarely exposes the threat of the thin blue line. About as many Americans have been killed by police since 9/11/01 as died on that day. Between 1980 and 2005, police killed 9,500 people in the U.S., approximately one per day and almost three-fourths as many people as have been sentenced and executed in the United States since colonial times. A study in Harris County, Texas, found that between 1999 and mid 2005, officers in the county shot 65 unarmed people, killing 17.

They tended early on to focus their brutality against the other – immigrants, gangsters, ethnic minorities, transients and the counterculture. Today they still bias their violence against the fringes of society, the young and the powerless, but they are now so vast a presence that no one is safe, no matter how respectable, no matter his demographic.

Some will object that that author is cherry picking. So let us limit ourselves to just the last couple months to illustrate the depth of the problem....continued in link below

PS If you distrust socialism, you should distrust law-enforcement socialism as much as anything, for this is the original sin that allows all other state depredations to follow. I think another blogger Rita had mentioned the need for statistics for police shootings on another thread. And they are in this link.

One out of every 142 Americans is in prison — and this does not include military prisons or INS jails...

The US has a unique distinction: It is the world's greatest prison state.

The US, "the land of the free," has the biggest prison population in the world and the highest rate of prisoners per capita of all countries — including countries that President Bush believes need liberating by US armed forces.

Even China, with one party rule and a population that is 4.5 times larger than the US population, has 30% fewer total prisoners than the US. China's per capita rate is a small fraction of the US rate.

The US prison population per capita is three times higher than "axis of evil" country Iran, five times higher than Tanzania, and seven times higher than a civilized European country like Germany.

Paul Craig Roberts gets into the gestapo like CPS but what of BM facilities?

And just as we're told that practically any development justifies "expanded vigilance" against terrorism, just about any adolescent problem or behavior can be depicted as an indication that the youngster is "at risk," and thus needs to be confined in a BM facility to get "straightened out" through means that include unambiguous torture.

There is no way to avert the train wreck now. The plus-51% of the population on the dole alone guarantees it – that’s the point of no return. Not to mention the abject failure of the government education system, and many other factors we’ve discussed before.

And as you are biting down on that banana or....and chasing it down with Coca Cola made with corn syrup (to make up for the 1/3 price you're not paying because Cubans and their natural cane sugar needs to be embargoed for the US populace's own good.

The fact that people still cling to the belief that the State is required to resolve disputes is amazing, since modern courts are out of the reach of all but the most wealthy and patient, and are primarily used to shield the powerful from competition or criticism.

This is one alternative outside the box of statism. One does not need to wait for this alternative to take hold although it already has to some extent as more and more understand what is going on. At a personal level it is about avoiding trouble. Taking precautions. Surrounding oneself with compatible friends. Reducing vulnerabilities. And this can be as explicit as having a personal covenant of unanimous consent. And there are arbitration services that one can use that actually solve the problems. Not to mention that a prudent businessman pays attention to the certainty trap and makes provision for the risk of set backs and liabilities....

I might also add that if the US can slide into being a third world banana republic, could it rise to another model?

But then they did not have Hamilton nor Lincoln to contend with nor their whig Mercantlist warfare-welfare-you will be assimilated agenda.

But they the Swiss do have a 4% referendum that allows them to rescind laws on the spot--a way to easily undo the works of politicians . States (cantons that actually compete) and competitive interest in trade and good will....There is more of course including multiple currencies...Oh how refreshing....

So why is Switzerland different? Here are some highlight of why the Swiss government model works and the European Union and American Union have failed to deliver on their big-government utopian promises.

National Expansion By Voluntary Association vs Force — The term "Willensnation" is a Swiss concept of national growth and expansion by attraction through the voluntary association of neighboring principalities, cities, and individuals. This makes Switzerland a nation created by acts of free will rather than force. Growth by attraction of those willing to be part of the Helvetian Confederation rather than war and invasion have served the Swiss well over the last few hundred years of peace and prosperity.

How totally different from the American model of "manifest destiny" and military aggression which is how most of the national expansion of the United States took place. The growth of the Union was followed again by force with the outright invasion of the Southern states that decided to leave by Lincoln's armies during the War Between the States.

The article also specifically addresses and fleshes out :

Tax Competition vs Forced Tax Harmonization — ....

Competing Currencies vs Currency Monopoly — .....

Ultimate Citizen Control vs Political Establishment —....

This is something to look at. But it is govt and you know what that means.

And alternatives were provided here on the link below too--no it is not to reform the police. They are beyond reform. Parenting does not require policing. Nor does living one's life.http://www.strike-the-root.com/police-reform

Re: Yes, it's strange to see the "Civil" war cited in this column as it was. Definitely a jarring note. And even the Revolution should be subject to some scrutiny. Good column otherwise...

When Aarron Russo--the author of freedom to fascism--was asked to join Nelson Rockefeller, Rockefeller told Russo he wanted to get the women out into the work force--to free them from the home (sic)--so that he could tax them AND to get at the children! Russo refused Rockefeller's offer.

It is most especially "jarring" to note that this fallout has not totally dissipated as witnessed in this column regarding the "Civil War" AND that it missed that there were TWO Revolutionary wars and that we lost one of them and that we were not created by the first but UNDone by the failed Second War (of Secession) and from usurpations worse than those visited by England's George III.

Not the least that because carnage and mayhem was visited on US civilians, and slaves by a standing US Prez and a US General with a cool name acting "on orders" it was glossed over and even attributed as saving the nation, even though a foreign prez and generals would have been hung for War Crimes.

And the article missed the attribution of what actually saved us from short and grim lives. See Thomas DiLorenzo's "How Capitalism Saved America" (now remnant thanks to the planks of Abraham Lincoln's Unnecessary War. It was also the bloodiest war in American History waged on civilians and later on the Indians) and apparently on the minds around us.

Perhaps today's STR quote applies: Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts." ~ Frank Zappa

Not only is there a military-industrial-police-state-prison-gmo-food-farm but another arm. It is--acadamia--and it is a creature of that empire, it gets funding in the billions from it, its research is heavily directed toward its needs, its faculties are intertwined with Federal agencies, and insofar as academia may be said to have a philosophy it would follow more or less the support for big government, and the bigger the better.

What what might parenting--home schooling look like with respect to property rights, freedom from initiation of force (anarcho-libertarianism)?
(Trading and Personal Relationships) AS OPPOSED to Policing.

But what if one needs to get out of waiting or hoping or convincing others to change their ways INCLUDING authoritarians?

If you are a young person OR a person with feet or a wheel chair or crutches and need to get away, I introduce the following because they start one thinking out-side the box and they are models that can be frame worked and lived without parents AND the boot on one's neck nanny state.

One is an adult that moment one can support oneself and leave home!! And it does not have to be that hard. And it does not matter if one thinks oneself too old...!

1. Think of all those young individuals in England, US, around the world who with this one counter intuitive idea could stop banging their heads against a wall. Of course they are being set up by those who feed off one's ignorance...

2. And or get a bus (they are dirt cheap), cut ALL the chords (Direct Actions)-- sever the rat race with its propaganda and its self ratcheting hopelessness/insinuations and "Get A Life"--As In One's Own--(Direct Results) without the utopia, rights and treadmill and permission conflict traps....http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Road-Harold-Hough/dp/1559500670/ref=cm_cr_...

3. Watch Steve Wynn's set-up, set-design and physical-framework (hotel/club) move to Macau (Direct Actions). Moving innovatively, spiritually and physically to spaces of freedom in an unfree world AND make innovation actually possible--(Direct Results). And that translates to waitresses making north of $100K in Macau working with Steve. Embracing the division of labor society (laissez faire capitalism) remnanthttp://www.lewrockwell.com/holland/holland19.1.html

Re: Generals. Many former top generals and admirals have written memoirs around the theme "war is hell," but Gen. Smedley Butler went a step further, writing a book titled War Is a Racket.

Smedley defined a racket as "something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people." War, he goes on, "is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious" of rackets.

When referring to War as an anarcho-libertarian it makes more sense to point out that it is a racket and refer to General Smedley Butler the highest decorated Marine, than to use war is hell Sherman who was every bit as much a racist and white supremacist as Lincoln. (He was also an anti-Semite, and of course hated red-skinned people almost as much as he hated South Carolinians — and would later kill them in even greater numbers).

RE: Perhaps today's STR quote applies: Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts." ~ Frank Zappa

It is NOT about "guts" and I would stay clear of a library--most of the stuff in there has been selected and is re-hash. Thank goodness for the internet specifically the sites I mentioned above including Lewrockwell.com and Mises.org. It gives the economics behind history and current events.

For those who insist on honoring military veterans on Memorial Day, there are three genuine heroes – and not many others – who come to mind, and merit attention.

1. Already mentioned above: Marine Corps General Smedley Butler – who twice won the Congressional Medal of Honor, and wrote one of the best anti-war books: War Is a Racket;

2. Army Warrant Officer Hugh Tompson, a helicopter pilot who came upon the ongoing My Lai massacre in Vietnam. He ordered his gunnery crew to open fire on any American soldiers who continued the killing of Vietnamese civilians, thus ending the slaughter;

3. Army Private Bradley Manning who, it is alleged, came into possession of “classified” information (i.e., information the government didn’t want the American public to know about) and, allegedly, turned this information over to Julian Assange for distribution on “Wikileaks.” Manning will not be available for any public recognition of his heroism, as he is reportedly being held, incommunicado, in an Army prison, guarded by other military men for whom the word “hero” would not be applicable.

It is at times useful to imagine how a truly laissez-faire society, one entirely emancipated from the shackles of state coercion, might exist and operate. Morris and Linda Tannehill examine this very idea in The Market for Liberty: Is Government Really Necessary?

The Statist will ask but how will you do this and that and this and so forth?

*

How, the statist is heard to question, might common disputes find resolution without the currently preferred monopoly of the state's courts?
*

What about private monopolies that would ruthlessly jack up prices and bleed us working-class proletarians to death?
*

By what means might a laissez-faire society offer protection from foreign aggressors?
*

How might the personal liberties underpinning the whole system be protected if it were not for the tireless work of the state's police and its myriad other law-enforcement agencies?

In response: "Freedom is not only as moral as governmental slavery is immoral," the authors write, "it is as practical as government is impractical."

The Tannehills argue persuasively, the free market provides solutions that governments would never dream of. "The big advantage of any action of the free market," contend the Tannehills is....see link

Whenever there arises in conversation the mere suggestion of a totally free, laissez-faire market — the possibility that human beings might even be able to survive (much less thrive) without the safety net of state control — apologists for "benevolent government" invariably step atop their soapboxes and ask, "Yes, but who will provide education for the masses, if not the public schools?" or "Who will care for the sick and weak, if not the public hospitals?"

Indeed, these are questions that deserve thoughtful, honest answers. But these questions assume realities that are not in evidence.

They suppose that "the public" (i.e., the state) actually has money to "provide" these services, rather than, as is actually the case, first having to expropriate (steal) it from private, productive individuals. Furthermore, the fallacy of benign governmental control relies on the idea that governments can provide essential services more reliably and cost-effectively than the private sector.

In other words, the government's obligation to provide essential services is more reliable and effective than the private sector's opportunity to provide essential services. Admittedly, this debate does not lend itself to easy, black-and-white conclusions.

But as the Tannehills argue persuasively, the free market provides solutions that governments would never dream of. "The big advantage of any action of the free market," contend the Tannehills,

is that errors and injustices are self-correcting. Because competition creates a need for excellence on the part of each business, a free-market institution must correct its errors in order to survive. Government, on the other hand, survives not by excellence, but by coercion; so an error or flaw in a governmental institution can (and usually will) perpetuate itself almost indefinitely, with its errors being "corrected" by further errors. Private enterprise must, therefore, always be superior to government in any field.

(It is worth mentioning here that corporations acting in collusion with the state are not private enterprises as the Tannehills define them. They are simply entities that have co-opted the government's "gun-for-hire" to do their dirty work for them. Think Wall Street "bailout" recipients and their army of DC lobbyists. Indeed, think any institution at all that seeks unfair protection or promotion from the state.)

Paramilitary police are a relatively recent state invention. They’ve metastasized into a domestic occupation force, enhancing government, institutionalizing injustice, plundering with permission, Tasing with perversion, cloaked in full immunity, and not protecting people. Whatever you do, don’t call 911. As a mundane, your home is no longer your castle.